On August 1, Donald Trump stated that his decision to relocate nuclear submarines to “appropriate locations” near Russia was in response to veiled threats made against the United States by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev via his Telegram channel.
According to NBC, Trump referred to comments made by Medvedev encouraging the US president to “revisit his favorite movies about the living dead and recall just how dangerous the mythical ‘Dead Hand’ can be.”
Medvedev’s reference to the ‘Dead Hand’—a covert Soviet-era nuclear weapons control system—appears to be a direct response to a July 31 post made by Trump on Truth Social, in which he downplayed concerns over increased trade cooperation between Russia and India, stating they could “take their dead economies down together.”